Articles Tagged withalimony

On the surface of it, the decision about whether to continue working after you have children or to leave the workforce for a certain number of years after your children are born is more controversial than it should be. It is not hard to find blogs and countless discussion forums full of unkind sentiments toward one or the other type of parent. Working mothers might imagine that the mommies on the playground in the middle of the day are judging them for being self-centered career women, while stay-at-home moms might imagine that their peers who continued working see them as boring and lacking drive. Fortunately, Florida law recognizes the contribution of income-earning spouses to a marriage and a family, and it also recognizes the contribution of spouses who do not have a paid job. In fact, Floridadivorce courts freely acknowledge that having one spouse stay home with the children can be a source of support to the career of the other spouse and the financial health of a family.

Alimony and Stay-at-Home Parents

Permanent alimony in Florida is the stuff of legend, but it is neither a given nor terribly elusive. It all depends on the specific circumstances of the family. Typically, the recipient of permanent alimony is someone who was married for at least 17 years and did not earn an income for most of the marriage. Besides chronic illnesses, being a stay-at-home parent is the most common reason for not working during a long marriage. These are some recent cases where stay-at-home parents have requested alimony; in some cases, the courts awarded it.Continue reading

Of Florida’ssix types of alimony, permanent alimony is probably the one that gets the most publicity and inspires the longest legal battles. Florida is one of only a few states where a court can require a divorced person to make monthlyalimony payments to his or her former spouse indefinitely. Usually, courts only award permanent alimony when the couple was married for 17 years or more. That is a long enough time for the supported spouse to assume that the couple’s financial situation is permanent. After marriages of such length, it is also likely that the spouses are close to retirement age and may have health problems associated with age.

Courts also sometimes award permanent alimony after a long marriage when the supported spouse is young enough to have a career ahead of her.Kimberly Dickson successfully argued before an appeals court that, because of the 20 years she had spent as a stay-at-home parent, her earning potential was considerably less than if she and her former husband had not agreed that she should stay home for all those years. In other words, courts take into account a spouse’s contributions to a marriage that are not in the form of currency and other material assets.Kruse v. Levesque is another case where an appeal court awarded permanent alimony to a woman in her 40s; in this case, the marriage had lasted only 11 years, and the court ruled that permanent alimony was appropriate because of the wife’s disability.Continue reading

When the phrase “imputed income” is mentioned, the first image that comes to many people’s minds is the media stereotype of the deadbeat dad. They picture a man who refuses to seek work or who only takes jobs that pay under the table. The stereotypical deadbeat dad is someone who cares more about avoiding paying child support than about the wellbeing of his children. His pride will not allow him to let the court tell him how to spend his money, no matter how much or how little of it he has. He lets his bitterness toward his ex-wife cloud his judgment, so the court decides how much he should be earning and forces him to pay, setting in motion a cycle of bitterness and unfulfilled obligations.

Regardless of the fact that there are far fewer true deadbeat dads in real life than there are in the popular imagination, child support obligations are not the only reason that Florida’s family courts make decisions based on someone’s imputed income. TheKoscher v. Koschercase involves the divorce of a wealthy couple who did not have minor children at the time of the divorce. Instead, the judge relied on imputed income purely to determinealimony payments.

What is Imputed Income?

In short, imputed income is estimated potential income. When a supporting spouse (or a parent paying child support) is earning an income, the courts base the amount of support payments on the income amount. If the court determines that the person is voluntarily unemployed or intentionally earning less money than he or she could, the court bases the support payments on what the person should be earning based on his or her previous work experience and previous income amounts.Continue reading

Florida is one of only a few states that still allow permanentalimony, and for that it has gained some notoriety. Of course, the requirements for awarding permanent alimony are quite strict, and the cases that involve it tend to be complex. The guiding principle that Florida courts use in determining spousal support and other matters related to property division isequitable distribution. Equitable distribution means assigning to each spouse the assets and obligations that the court deems fair based on the couple’s unique circumstances. As you might imagine, there is plenty of room for disagreement about what is fair. TheWayne v. Einspar appeal is a recent Florida family law case in which a former spouse challenged the court’s decision regarding equitable distribution.

Background of the Wayne v. Einspar Case

Matthew Wayne and Susan Einspar divorced in 2013, after their son had reached adulthood. At the time of their divorce, both parents had separately cosigned for various loans for their young adult son. Wayne was a cosigner on the student loans, and Einspar was a cosigner on the car loan. In the original divorce decision, the court did not count the loans as marital property. Additionally, the court required Wayne to pay permanent alimony to Einspar and to keep a life insurance policy with Einspar as the beneficiary in order to secure this alimony. Wayne filed an appeal, challenging the court’s original decision on 10 counts, many of them related to alimony.Continue reading

The longer a couple has been married, and the more assets they have, the more complicated the case tends to be if they divorce. Perhaps the most bitter divorce battles center around the physical custody of minor children and the right to make decisions related to their upbringing. When a couple does not have minor children, the biggest disagreements usually have to do with thedivision of property. Florida courts have clear rules about what is marital property and what is non-marital property, but there is still room for complicated situations to arise in which each spouse can make a claim to a certain asset. For example, if one spouse earned a lot more money than the other during the marriage, how should that money be divided? If one spouse used the couple’s money irresponsibly, how does that affect the court’s decision about how to divide the property?

Florida’s Equitable Distribution Doctrine

Florida courts divide divorcing couples’ property according to the principle ofequitable distribution. In other words, they go by what is fair. They do not always divide marital property evenly, and they do not simply take into account how much income each spouse brought in and then let each spouse keep only the money he or she earned. Florida law also considers unpaid contributions to the marriage as reasons a person is entitled to a certain share of the marital property. For example, time spent as a stay-at-home parent also counts as a contribution. The logic is that, when taking care of the children full time, the stay-at-home parent spouse was freeing up the other spouse to concentrate more on earning money.

No matter your profession, you have probably seen articles circulating online or on email lists about industry-specific words to expunge from your vocabulary. Most of these articles flag certain words for deletion because they are clichés or neologisms. The first time you clicked on a clickbait article telling you to avoid saying “think outside the box” or “circle back” was probably years ago, when the term “clickbait” was known only to professional writers. The family law terms you should remove from your vocabulary, however, are actually misleading. They refer to outdated concepts in family law and therefore are unhelpful in thinking about yourdivorce andparenting plan.

Custody

People tend to speak of one parent having custody of the children after a divorce, while the other parent has visitation. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was more common than it is now for children to spend most of their time with one parent and to spend only two weekends a month with the other parent. Now, when possible, courts often rule to have children spend at least two nights per week with each parent. Exceptions are when the parents live so far away from each other that it is not practical to transport the children back and forth each week.

Florida is one of only a few states in which judges can awardpermanent alimony to the spouse with the lower income or earning potential as part of adivorce decree. For a novelist with a certain mindset, Florida’s spousal support laws could be a plot point in a farce about materialistic social climbers and wealthy business tycoons. (Would Bunny Lebowski in The Big Lebowski have had to stage her own abduction if she could have just sued for permanent alimony?) In practice, permanent alimony is one of the least frequently awarded forms of spousal support. The only people who are even eligible to receive permanent spousal support are those who have been married for 17 years or more. Most permanent alimony recipients are elderly or have a chronic illness that would make gainful employment difficult or impossible.

Local media have recently highlighted the complexities of high asset divorce by reporting on the divorce of Nancy Hua and Dennis Tsung, an affluent South Florida couple. As of August 2017, the details of how to divide the couple’s assets have yet to be completely worked out. The rulings issued so far in the divorce and inNancy Hua’s appeal reveal many interesting things about the way Florida courts view property division between divorced spouses.

Wealth Plus Time Does Not Always Equal Permanent Alimony

Nancy and Dennis were married for almost 18 years. In the original divorce case, Nancy requested permanent alimony of $20,000 per month. For most of the marriage she had been a stay-at-home parent with no income. The spousal support award she received was for rehabilitative alimony; Dennis was to pay her $2,500 per month for two years. He was also to pay $12,000 toward her educational expenses; the plan was for her to attend nursing school and then begin working. The court estimated that she would be able to earn an annual income of $50,000 working full time as a nurse. The reason for the court’s decision to award rehabilitative alimony is that Nancy Hua had plenty of potential for gainful employment. She was in her early forties and in good health, and her children were old enough not to require full time childcare.Continue reading

Alimony, spousal support, and spousal maintenance all refer to money paid by one ex-spouse to another after a divorce. The idea behindalimony is that, if one spouse depended on the other financially during the marriage, that spouse cannot become financially independent immediately after divorce. Florida alimony laws are quite favorable to the spouse receiving alimony payments. In fact, Florida is one of only a few states that can require the supporting spouse to continue making alimony payments indefinitely.

A change in the financial situation of one or both parties can lead to a modification of the spousal support order. One of the most common reasons for early termination of alimony payments is if the supported spouse remarries. As with so many legal issues, though, there is a gray area in which judges must consider the unique circumstances of the couple in deciding whether to terminate or reduce alimony payments.

Lump Sum vs. Monthly Payments

Most alimony payments in Florida take the form of periodic alimony, meaning that the supporting spouse pays the supported spouse a certain amount of money each month. Bridge-the-gap alimony is intended to help the supported spouse through the transitional period of divorce and cannot exceed two years.Durational alimony, which is new as of 2010, lasts for a finite period of time specified in the court order. Both temporary and permanent periodic alimony stop immediately if the supported spouse remarries.Continue reading

It is understandable that some spouses who are divorcing are not necessarily in the mindset to cooperate with one another. After all, fighting and disagreements have likely played a role in the decision to end their marriage. However, refusal to come to an agreement regarding one or more issues in a divorce can cause serious delays and can increase the cost of a divorce.

Before a court will grant your divorce, you and your spouse must settle numerous issues including:

Property and debt division;

Child support;

Time-sharing and visitation;

Parenting plans;

Alimony.

If any one of those issues cannot be settled out of court, the divorce can be delayed as the court will have to decide for you. You and your spouse will have to present evidence to support your arguments for how you want to resolve the issue at trial and the judge will rule on the matter.

A recent divorce case demonstrates just how much a divorce case can be affected by adversarial disputes instead of cooperation. After 25 years of marriage, the wife of the founder of Cancer Treatment Centers for America filed for divorce. The filing occurred in 2009 and the case is still dragging on due to several disagreements regarding a prenuptial agreement, custody, and division of their millions of dollars in assets. The case has involved numerous hearings, appellate hearings, changes of lawyers, contempt orders, and other complications, and is now finally going to trial over asset and property division. In the meantime, both spouses have likely spent an enormous amount of money, stress, and time dealing with the divorce proceedings and have been unable to remarry since their marriage is not yet dissolved after more than six years.Continue reading

Divorce can be an uncertain or stressful situation for anyone. After all, many facets of your life from your living arrangements to your finances to your relationship with your children will likely change. While these changes may be difficult for anyone, they can be particularly difficult and stressful for a parent who has decided to stop working to stay home and care for the children and the household.

Being a stay-at-home parent is never easy, as there is a great amount of responsibility involved in constantly caring for small children on a daily basis. In addition, a stay-at-home parent is often tasked with a large percentage of cooking, cleaning, laundry, and other household chores. Such contributions can be extremely valuable for a household, especially if it eliminates the need for costly child care, housekeepers, or other services. In addition, a stay at home parent agrees to put his or her own educational or professional goals on hold for the greater good of the family.

Unfortunately, when it comes time for a divorce, the breadwinner of the family tends to focus on his or her financial contributions and not appreciate the sacrifices the stay-at-home parent has made. Because they have contributed more financially, they often believe they deserve more financially, as well. Luckily, family courts generally take the non-financial contributions of stay-at-home parents into considerations when making determinations regarding alimony and other financial support in a divorce. However, it is always wise for stay at home parents to do the following and more to protect their rights:Continue reading